Beneath the Skin(45)

She crouches down to inspect the damage to the wall. The dislodged bricks seem rather sad and pathetic, the soil around them saturated and spread. But it looks to Antonia as though the wall can be rebuilt fairly easily. She thinks she might try to do it herself, mixing a little cement can’t be so hard, surely?

The wall tells the story as she stares. Drinking then driving. He’s done it before, only the once. They had angry words. ‘You’ll kill yourself, David. Even worse, you’ll kill someone else. Please don’t. Never again.’

‘I promise. Scout’s honour.’ A David smile. ‘I’ll never do it again, my darling Antonia. Promise.’

It’s bad. Drink driving is very bad. David’s nose was bloody and swollen. Next time could be so much worse. She’ll have to say something, she knows, but it can wait. It doesn’t seem important just now. After a disastrous start to the day, everything is fine. Charlie is stable in hospital, Sophie is settled at home and now it’s time for David, her David. She glances at her watch and feels a jolt of disappointment. She has so much to say, but adding on the train journey time from Manchester, David won’t be home for some time yet.

After leaving Sophie’s house in Didsbury, she tried to hurry home in the car, driving as fast as she could within the speed limits. But the traffic lights conspired, each turning red as she approached. Still, it gave her an opportunity to practise the words out loud.

‘Last night, David. When I …’ How to put it? She still feels hot with shame when she thinks of the words she said. ‘When I pushed you away.’ Hardly the truth. She’d screamed at him, pummelled his head with her fists until she woke properly. Only then did she register it was David. Only then did she catch the look on his face, the crumpled sad face of a boy, before he covered it with trembling hands and cowered away.

‘I was dreaming about my father. I thought you were him.’ It’s the truth, but it sounds so pathetic.

‘He beat my mother.’ She can say that. She can say those words, but not explain why. How can she ever explain the reason when she doesn’t understand it herself?

‘He was a racist, my dad. My dad was racist. That’s why he beat her.’ A racist who lived with her African-Irish mother for twenty-five years. It didn’t make sense. She’d seen the photographs. He loved her then. And despite the beatings, they sometimes laughed, her mum and dad.

Far simpler to say, ‘My father was a despicable drunk.’ That covers everything.

She stands up and brushes the damp soil from her jeans. Dinner first, she has to focus. Her American-sized fridge is full as it always is. It’s just a question of what will go with what. Ready Steady Cook. And sweet Rupert. What an age ago that was. She puts her key in the latch and pushes the door open, careful not to put her dirty hands on the clean paint. She smells the flowers before she sees them. A huge bouquet. Simple, stunning scented flowers, just the way she likes them. ‘David!’ she calls with the hugest of smiles. ‘I’m home.’

‘A failure, I said. And that isn’t true. I was hard on David. Too hard,’ Charlie sighs from his hospital bed.

Charlie has been sleeping on and off all day. He feels ill. For the first time since the whole diabetes debacle started he really feels ill, which is a good thing. He has no desire to pretend, to bustle about as though everything is fine and dandy. It’s a relief, if he’s honest, a relief to let go. He supposes this is how God designed illness, as a prelude to death. Not that he thinks he’s dying, particularly, but he can see the very ill might welcome the alleviation.

‘Mum says David’s like a kid who never grew up. Peter Pan, she says. You took me once to see the play and I was scared of Hook. And the hungry crocodile. Tick, tock! Do you remember?’ Rupert asks.

‘Did I really? That was jolly sporting of me.’ Charlie frowns for a moment. ‘Palace Theatre on Oxford Street. You were seven. Peter Pan looked like a girl.’

‘I think it was a girl, Dad.’

Charlie closes his eyes. He was hard on David, definitely too hard.

He opens his eyes again. A thought has just occurred to him. Rupert must have been sitting in that chair for hours. ‘Are you hungry, son?’ he asks.

‘Starving, Dad.’

‘Did Mum leave any money? Do you have any?’

Rupert shakes his head.

‘Then we must call the nurse!’

Rupert looks at the consternation on his father’s face and laughs. He laughs so hard that it’s infectious and Charlie starts laughing too.

Antonia is still ‘in her head’, as Sophie would say, as she pulls off her boots and massages her tired feet. How can you know someone when you don’t really know yourself? she’s thinking. She heard an unmistakable note of surprise in Helen’s voice this morning on the telephone. As Rupert watched wide-eyed, she wanted to laugh at her own audacity and to say, ‘You may be surprised, Helen, but not half as much as I am.’

She admires the flowers on the hall table and beams. It feels good to be someone who can make a difference, she thinks, however small that difference might be.

Running up the stairs two by two, she’s careful not to slip on the limestone steps. Still smiling, she approaches the bathroom and knocks. Silly really, but knocking at any closed door is a habit from childhood. ‘Don’t you know how to fucking knock?’ That was the first time she witnessed it. Her mother on her knees, cowering. Her father’s open palm. She must have been nine or ten, older perhaps. Her mother had hidden it from her before then, had made excuses. ‘I’m just clumsy, love. You know me, I’d walk into anything.’